Hi All. You guessed it, it’s another customer request blog 😛
This time I had an education customer request that we disable the requirement to have a password apply shortly after the screensaver starts for student lab devices. This was to prevent students from locking a device at the end of a lesson by walking away from the device without logging out. Kids, huh?
Profile to the rescue!
After a little bit of digging, I managed to build a profile that will turn off the default setting to “Require password ‘x’ after sleep or screen saver begins”, found in System Preferences, under “Security & Privacy”.
The profile can be found on our Amsys profile GitHub Repo and has been tested on 10.10.x so make sure to test in your environment!
Word of warning
If a user walks away from a device with this profile deployed, any other user can wake the device up and make changes to the logged in user. Be careful to not use this in sensitive areas, including public areas or devices that may contain secure data!
Additionally, this is a ‘set once’ profile and is not enforced off, but will default the setting to off for all users when it’s deployed. Blocking access to the “Security & Privacy” pane in System Preferences should stop the user re-enabling it.
Summary
Ah, a short and sweet blog for today. As always, if you have any questions, queries or comments, let us know below (or @daz_wallace on Mac Admins Slack) and I’ll try to respond to and delve into as many as I can.
The usual Disclaimer: